Press Room

Dallas, TX — September 23, 2014 — Epsilon, the global leader in helping clients create customer connections that build brand and business equity, and Email Institute, the Epsilon-powered email marketing best practices destination, today released the Q2 2014 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks report. According to the report, triggered email volume, open and click rates all increased over this time last year (Q2 2013).

The report found that triggered messages accounted for 3.8% of total email volume in Q2 2014, which is 9.2% higher than Q2 2013. Similarly, triggered open rates increased to 74.9% and triggered click rates to 161.9%, versus 72.6% and 152.3% respectively, compared to Q2 last year.

“Brands of all sizes and across all industry categories today are striving to become more customer-centric—and rightly so as customer engagement continues to drive brand awareness, loyalty and revenue. Triggered messages are a great tool for a customer-centric email marketer to have in their arsenal as they acknowledge a customer’s specific actions and respond according to that behavior in a timely manner. I expect we’ll continue to see increases in the use and performance metrics of triggered messages,” said Judy Loschen, Vice President of Digital Analytics at Epsilon.

Triggered Message Email Trends Triggered message benchmarks are compiled from nearly 300 million triggered emails sent from April 2014 to June 2014 across multiple industries. Results track campaigns deployed as a result of an action or trigger such as Welcome, Thank You, Abandon Shopping Cart or Confirmation.

Triggered Highlights:

Triggered messages accounted to 3.8% of total email volume in Q2 2014, 9.2% higher than Q2 of last year (3.5%).

Non-bounce rates continued to drive strong results in Q2, just 1.9% lower than Business As Usual (BAU).

Triggered open rates were 74.9% higher than BAU open rates, an increase over Q2 2013.

Business As Usual Email Trends The quarterly analysis is compiled from 7.8 billion emails sent by Epsilon in April to June of 2014 across multiple industries and approximately 140 participating clients. The analysis combines data from Epsilon’s proprietary platforms.

BAU Highlights:

Open rates declined slightly in Q2 from Q1 2014 (32.9%). However, they are still up 8.0% over last year (Q2 2013).

Click rates declined modestly to 4.0% in Q2 from 4.3% in Q1. This is a standard seasonal decline, as by Q2 the holiday season has fully come to a close.

Non-bounce rates remained stable in Q2 (96.4%).

For more information and industry-specific benchmarks, the Q2 2014 Email Trends and Benchmarkreport is available at